Chinantec - History and Cultural Relations

The origin of the Chinantec is unknown. It is possible that they
migrated from the west near the Tehuacán Valley to their present
location as recently as
A
.
D
. 1000. By the fifteenth century Chinantec settlements were concentrated
in the well-watered, fertile lowland valleys near present-day Valle
Nacional. The Chinantla was successfully invaded in 1454-1455 by Nahuatl
speakers and then again in the early sixteenth century by the Spanish.
Three closely spaced epidemics of European-introduced diseases soon
decimated an estimated 80 percent of the Chinantec population, and by
the 1570s many Chinantec lived in dispersed hamlets of eleven to fifteen
persons. To facilitate political control and religious conversion,
colonial authorities forcibly congregated these Chinantec in
concentrated communities in the highlands. A great simplification in
social structure was one result. Most of the Chinantec region was not
held in
encomienda
but instead administered directly by the crown. Although the Spaniards
had hoped to find vast deposits of gold there, the area came instead to
be valued for cotton and cochineal. By the nineteenth century the best
lands had been taken by foreign companies, and many lowland Chinantec
were again displaced. Even after the 1910 Mexican Revolution, coffee,
banana, and tobacco production remained in foreign hands. Development
programs instituted since 1947 by the Papaloapan River Commission
displaced other lowland Chinantec.

The Chinantec region is contiguous with Zapotec communities to the south
and those of the Cuicatec to the west, Mazatec to the north, and Mixe to
the southeast.

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